I've not really looked myself...but reading between the lines at the "other place" where you've also contributed they reckon in principle that the CM4 is closer to the Schoeps MK22 than the MK21, whereas the CM3 was closer to the latter.

Irrespective of that, as Bob says, the CM3s are great little mics and I've used them both as main pairs and as spots...I've got four of them in the box usually sitting next to the Neumanns and the Schoeps and they perform very well. I've no doubt that the CM4 will be similar in terms of performance.

Mike Stranks wrote:Truth be told, recording work is all but non-existent now. The head says that I should sell some mics, but the heart...

My thoughts are to make a spreadsheet with approximate values for kit I want to keep for a while so the descendants have something to go on. I'll sell stuff I'm not using and don't expect to use reduce the burden on them when the time comes.

My father-in-law was a very keen amateur recording enthusiast and spent freely on his hobby. He had some classy gear...

... then dementia struck...

When he died mum-in-law naturally didn't want all that kit any more - although we did keep one very nice cassette deck as a reminder of him. Because I knew what was what vis-a-vis audio gear I was able to price and sell appropriately, but it's always been in the back of mind not to hang-on to kit once there's no realistic prospect of it being used by me again. If I still have my wits about me it'll be a huge wrench, but none of my kids takes any more than a passing interest in my audio work so I don't want them or the memsahib to be faced with selling gear of which they have no clue about value.

For new purchases would you recommend the CM3 or 4? Not noticed them before and they look great value but do I need to panic and get the CM3 now??? As a synth man I don't really have many mics (sm58 and Red5 LDC) but thinking I may need newer mics for recording my sons acoustic guitar and upright piano as a stereo pair...these look ok for that and seem a bargain price.

If you don't have any then I'd just go for the CM4... same price as the CM3 at Pinknoise.

The CM3 is a cracking mic, but it's hypocardioid pattern (almost omni with a slightly less sensitive rear) does mean you can't just chuck it up in ORTF and expect to get a 'normal' stereo sound.

The CM4 is still billed as 'wide cardiod', but it's slightly less wide than the CM3. Jean-Poll (the Line Audio front-man in Europe) says that you have to listen hard to hear the difference. So on that basis I'd not think twice about getting the CM4...

To be exact the link isn't broken but the site's security isn't completely set up for HTTPS. You get the following message from Firefox:

Your connection is not secure

The owner of sound-link.co.uk has configured their web site improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this web site.

It will let you through if you insist. John, if you change the link to HTTP then you won't get this problem. OTOH it will be an insecure link and searches in Google will show it as such which is not so helpful.